The final judges’ scores were 115-109, 115-109, and 114-110. N’Dam hit the deck in the 2nd, two times in the 5th, and a final time in the 7th. However, Lemieux gassed out in the 2nd half of the fight, and this enabled N’Dam to come on and win many of the later rounds.

The fight was very similar to the N’Dam vs. Peter Quillin fight from 2012. When Lemieux wasn’t knocking N’Dam down, he was coming back and winning rounds by out-boxing Lemieux. It could have been a much easier fight for Lemieux if he had stayed relaxed and focused more punches to the body instead of to the head. He was constantly head-hunting, and this made it easy for N’Dam to avoid his shots by using movement, jabbing and right hands to get the better of Lemieux.

N’Dam is a good fighter, but his chin betrays him again and again. It’s hard for him to win fights when he gets knocked down multiple times like he did tonight. Quullin knocked N’Dam down six times in their fight three years ago. It was a fight that N’Dam could have won if he didn’t keep getting knocked down again and again.

Lemieux showed excellent punching power with his left hook, but he wasted a lot of time head-hunting against a guy that was moving all night long against him. The smarter thing would have been for Lemieux to go after N’Dam’s body to make him stop running.

You’ve got to give N’Dam a lot of credit for being able to recover so many times in this fight. He was badly hurt many times in the fight, but was able to recover in between rounds each time.

In the best possible world, Lemieux’s promoter Golden Boy Promotions would look to put him in a unification match against WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin, but it’s unclear whether that’ll happen. Golden Boy will very likely save Lemieux for Saul “Canelo” Alvarez rather than letting him get put in with an advanced fighter like Golovkin.